Talisman of Progress Discussion

4 weeks ago

I feel like you went a little too all-in on exalted creatures. Essentially, they serve as much more fragile equipment, pumping your attacking creature +1/+1 but dying as collateral damage in board wipes. In my opinion, +1/+1 is way too low value to justify a card slot, so I would probably shift away from vanilla creatures with exalted, and shift to using some more powerful buff effects. By doing this, you could dedicate less card slots to buffs, and free up some more space for utility cards, draw, ramp, or removal.

You're already running Favor of the Overbeing, and while the other cards in its cycle are a bit more expensive, I feel their power level definitely justifies the cost. Shield of the Oversoul gives some evasion in flying, but the reason to run it is the indestructible it gives. Likewise, Steel of the Godhead gives lifelink which is nice, but the really important keyword is unblockable. You throw that on Rafiq, and all of a sudden you're swinging for 12 unblockable commander damage a turn. In addition, since the unblockable is for blue creatures, all the other creatures in the deck that you need to hit opponents also can get unblockable from it.

Because you focused so much on exalted cards, you seem to have neglected a few important categories. By my count, there are only 5 pieces of draw, and 7 pieces of ramp in the current deck. This is just a rough rule of thumb, but I usually like to try for at least 10 for each of those categories.

So, let's start with draw. If you decide to stick with the hordes of exalted creatures, Lifecrafter's Bestiary is a great way to filter your draws for no mana early on, and then start drawing cards off of every creature you play later on. On the other hand, if you decide to shift the deck more towards equipments/auras, Sram, Senior Edificer is a great way to draw cards off of those. Hunter's Insight and Hunter's Prowess both let you draw cards off of the damage your creatures deal. Hunter's Prowess in particular turns your commander into 7/7 trampling double-striking monster on its own. One cool creature that lets you draw cards is Augury Adept. Not only does it draw cards off of hitting opponents, it also gains you some life on the side. While it has no inherent evasion, I feel that the combination of those two abilities is worth a slot. One more thing that's kind of just a pet card of mine is Conqueror's Galleon. All of its abilities are kind of expensive for what they do, but the flexibility it offers is pretty awesome. You can use it as a land, loot, draw, or even recur stuff from your graveyard.

1 month ago

Just put in actual ramp instead of increasing your land count...35 lands is like the max you ever want to go above unless you know what you are doing. So put in all the mana dorks that you can. Edric, Spymaster of Trest is a fantastic card it protects you from getting swung at and you can draw cards off of it. In every deck unless you know to otherwise you need to ramp all of the Signets like Simic Signet and every possible talisman like Talisman of Progress.

and if you are going to be running ramp from lands... use cards like Nature's Lore ... getting from 2 to 3 lands in more important than 4 to 6

You have a lot of individually powerful cards but your overall curve is way too high. If you ever play semi-competitively and your average CMC is 3.98 then you will have already lost before you even get to play your first card. Letting most decks do what they want for 4 turns then its a great way to lose to some combo deck.

Also Command Zone don't know what they are doing they suggest cards which are super strong in causal games but have no viability at all in even semi competitive environment. Also try and take out all of your tap lands... phase them out as soon as possible they really hurt your ability to play the game.

2 months ago

1) Depends on your fast mana situation. My decks tend to run about 50-55~ mana sources, both lands, rocks, and rituals. My Sisay deck, for example, has 31 land but 24 additional mana sources on top of it (I kind of need it for Paradox Engine). 35 + 20 or so should be fine, really, since your Commander will be 6 mana.

2) Talisman of Progress should be in, and Mind Stone isn't bad either as it can be an extra card when you're 'comboing off'. Coalition Relic also seems pretty reasonable since it can +2 mana in one turn even if it is 3 mana. Grim Monolith, too. Narset needs more mana rocks that the typical deck now since you can't sculpt your hand with Vancouver mulligans and it needs to race to 6 mana ASAP in order to keep up.

3) I would personally run all of them except savor the moment, lol. Even Temporal Trespass.

4) Teferi's Oath is probably the best of the bunch, and if you get it for free then it's not bad. The new Teferi is probably much better than gideon of the Trials. Or Gideon Jura, for that matter. Just straight up drawing a card is good.

5) I dunno, probably 10-15. They shouldn't take up 20% of the deck because

6) No, it doesn't. Rest in Peace is a replacement effect, Tamiyo's emblem is a triggered ability. The card doesn't even go to the graveyard to trigger the ability of her emblem.

7) Spot removal should absolutely be in. Swords to Plowshares stops pesky creatures, and anything reasonably cost that gets rid of enchantments would be good too (otherwise how will you beat Food Chain). As for Wraths, just a few basic ones. Very few tier 1 decks actually rely on a mass of creatures, so in mine I just run like Toxic Deluge or something, but a simple Wrath of God or two wouldn't be bad.

Quick notes:

Inexorable Tide probably won't be able to contribute enough to warrant its slot over, say, another extra turn spell. Even if you can put loads of counters on your Planeswalkers during a Paradox Engine chain, you can still only use them once per your turn (unless you have a Teferi emblem/Oath). Same goes for Djeru. For example, what does Inexorable Tide bring to the table that Omniscience or Enter the Infinite does not?

Consider Omniscience and Enter the Infinite, because then you can, say, cast EtI off of Narset's trigger, put Omniscience on the top deck, cast literally any extra combat step card (Fury of the Horde works with 0 mana open), swing Narset again, cast Omniscience, and then cast every single card in your hand for 0 mana cost. With this, Bacon of Tomorrows becomes your top deck card every single turn, resulting in infinite turns in which you can tick up your Planeswalkers and swing with Narset for the victory. With Bacon, all things are possible, after all.

3 months ago

If you're looking to make this deck faster/more competitive, the first thing I'd do would be to replace all the lands that enter tapped, especially ones like Transguild Promenade because despite fixing your mana you end up being a turn behind. If shocklands and fetchlands are out of your budget, then even basics and painlands like Shivan Reef and City of Brass would be better, because ultimately the damage won't matter. Another big add would definitely be Brainstorm, not just as a cantrip but because if you end up drawing your big turn spells you can put them on top of your deck in response to a Narset trigger. My final suggestion would be to cut out some of your more expensive mana rocks - Thran Dynamo is great if you flip it off Narset, but spending 3+ mana on a single rock isn't where you want to be in the early game. I'd recommend Mana Vault, which obviously has a downside but it can allow you to get out a super early Narset which is really important for the deck. Obviously cards like Mana Crypt are also really good but they're also expensive. I'd recommend cards like Talisman of Progress.

3 months ago

Outs:- Chalice of LifeFlip: Isn't the worst card in Oloro, but isn't all that reliable either.- Darksteel Plate: I've seen you play this card a bunch of times, and most of the time it just sits there, all menacingly. Problem is - your deck doesn't plan to use creatures often, so the plate also won't be used either.- Dreamstone Hedron: Ramp is great, but expensive ones that produce colorless mana can be iffy since they're often easy targets right after you play them. Gilded Lotus can at least let you cast counterspells after you tap all your lands to play it.- Orzhov Keyrune: This one is just personal preference from me. I don't like 3 mana artifact ramp most of the time. (Chromatic Lantern and Darksteel Ingot are much better) It's up to you if you wanna take it out or not.- Sun Droplet: This card is very slow and you could easily replace it with something better.- Subversion: It may seem like a decent drain effect, but it's not that great since it's 5 mana and makes you wait til your next upkeep before it does anything.- Thought Reflection: Decent card, but 7 mana is pretty costly. Up to you if you wanna keep it.- Celestial Force: It's nice to instantly gain life each upkeep, but 8 mana for basically just a vanilla creature otherwise isn't really good.- Pontiff of Blight: Extort is nice for your deck, but your deck doesn't have many creatures to take advantage of the pontiff. Up to you if you wanna keep this guy if you wanna add more creatures.- Skirge Familiar: I think this card would be a lot better if your deck was more combo focused.- Azorius Chancery: These types of lands will flat out screw you over if they get destroyed or Blood Mooned.

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